Kiera Brinkley, from Portland, Oregon, was just two years old when she contracted pneumococcal sepsis, a bacterial infection that cut off her bloodstreams and forced doctors to amputate both sets of her limbs.
“I was never the type of ‘disabled person’ to stay in my wheelchair the entire day and have everybody wait on me,” Brinkly says.
“I wanted to go out and do everything I had learned how to do with my arms and legs, and adapt to how to do it without them.”
When Kiera works on choreographing a dance, she loses herself in her work. Sometimes, the 24-year-old becomes so lost in the movements she forgets for a second that she lacks the hands, fingers and feet to fully carry out her vision.
“I picture myself with arms and legs. When I come to the class [to teach the choreography], I forget don’t have any,” Brinkley told ABC News. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about that,’” to the other dancers.
Because of Brinkley’s infection at the age of two, she became a quadruple amputee. The infection affected her arteries and damaged her extremities. Doctors had to amputate portions of her arms and legs to literally save her life.
At the young age of amputation, Brinkley ended up having a key friend to help her stay as mobile as the other kids: her younger half-sister, Uriah Boyd.
Boyd was only a month old when Brinkley lost her limbs. As Boyd grew up, she wanted to emulate her older sister. Boyd even crawled like Brinkley, scooting on her diaper, instead of using her arms and legs. When Brinkley was put in a dance class, she taught her sister movements and they practiced together.
As the pair became older, they became so close they could communicate without speaking. The pair would practice movements or just play together using certain dance, almost gymnastic, movements.
Brinkley graduated from high school and thought she would leave dance behind to become a medical assistant. But she couldn’t get dance out of her head and kept performing at various events. Eventually, she was approached by a member of a professional dance company in Portland.
Brinkley is now a full-fledged member of the Polaris Dance Theatre dance company, where she both performs and choreographs dance.
Boyd said seeing her sister in a professional company has helped her develop her own dance skills and…
… allow both of the sisters to be more independent from one another.
“I can learn a lot of things by watching her,” said Boyd.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says that pneumococcal disease is the world’s number 1 vaccine-preventable cause of death among infants and children younger than 5 years of age.
According to the WHO, up to 1.6 million people die each year globally as a result of pneumococcal diseases – about half of them are children younger than 5 years of age in developing countries. WHO classes pneumococcal disease as a major cause of mortality and morbidity (Morbidity = illness, disease. Mortality = death).
Pneumococcal disease causes two deaths every hour among children younger than 5 years of age in the Americas annually, according to PAHO (Pan American Health Organization).
It is also among the top two isolates found in otitis media. Pneumococcal pneumonia tends to affect humans when they are either very young or very old.
Thank God Brinkley not only survived but thrived all these years. Proving that there is nothing stopping you from accomplishing your dreams or walking in your calling. Go ‘head Kiera!
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